A Study in Point Guard Play: How Good is Ty Lawson?

the nuggets have been perfectly pedestrian thus far. ty lawson hasn’t. he’s been incredible. going into the season, i was worried that brian shaw’s inside-out system and his desire to slow the nuggets down would stifle lawson’s career and prevent his numbers from continuing to steadily improve. thankfully, this hasn’t been the case. despite being thrown into a new system that not only doesn’t fit his own talents but also doesn’t fit the talents of his teammates, and despite being surrounded by arguably the worst team in his career, lawson is playing better than ever, as shown by the stats below:

note that lawson’s 2012-13 numbers took a dip primarily due to an awful first half of the year — his post-all star break numbers fit more in line with the steady progression he’s exhibited throughout his career. lawson’s progression is impressive, and it’s actually very much in line with the typical progression of talented point guards: they typically struggle in their early years more so than players in other positions, but they get better more consistently and typically have break-out years in their fourth to sixth seasons. for example, consider how some of the other point guards selected in the 2009 draft have progressed:

while none of these players have quite reached chris paul status (and it’s likely that none of them will), they’ve all steadily improved throughout their careers and have established themselves as strong nba starters. it’s important to note that these improvements have all come in conjunction with steadily increasing usage percentages. this is important because, as has been demonstrated many times in basketball sabermetrics, there’s generally a trade-off between usage and efficiency. in other words, the more a player is demanded to do, the less efficiently they can do it. this has tremendous implications on a player’s value.

for example, steve kerr was incredibly efficient, but there was a ceiling on his value because he really only did one thing (thus, his usage was low). point guards are generally required to do a great deal (facilitate the offense, get others involved, and score when necessary), so this usage/efficiency trade-off is perhaps more important at this position than at any other. notice how lawson’s usage has increased each year, and, barring the 2012-13 season, so has his efficiency. this means he’s beating the usage/efficiency problem: he’s doing more, and he’s doing it more efficiently.

obviously it’s early in the year, but his play this year has been the best example of beating the usage/efficiency tradeoff: his usage is 25%, which is significantly higher than it’s ever been, and his player efficiency rating is 23.1, which is also significantly higher than it’s ever been (this ranks 5th among point guards). this is incredibly impressive, especially when you consider how awful the team around him is.

in fact, let’s use some fancy new stats to show just how awful the nuggets are this year and just how impressive lawson has been (and how much better his numbers would be if he had a strong team around him). this year, the nba installed SportVU player tracking systems into each arena and is releasing some of the resulting information to the public. basically, this allows us to identify things like how many times a player gets a rebound when the ball is within 3 feet of him and how many times a player creates a shot for a teammate. this latter example is the one that we’ll be focusing on, and it’s a better measure of playmaking than assists because it isn’t dependent on whether his teammates happen to make their shots or not. here’s a table with the league leaders at assist opportunities per game (click to expand):

if we look at assists per game, which is the traditional measure of playmaking, lawson ranks 6th in the league. this is pretty good, but his 8.7 assists per game is far from the league-leader chris paul’s 12.8. but what happens if we look at assist opportunities per game? chris paul still leads the league (no surprise there) with 21.6 opportunities created per game, but lawson is close behind at 19.4. using a player’s assist opportunities created per game in conjunction with his assists per game, we can see what percentage of the time a player’s teammates are able to convert on the opportunity. i call this statistic the team conversion rate, and it roughly measures how bad a team’s shooting is. chris paul’s team conversion rate is 59%, meaning his clippers teammates score on 59% of his passes that directly lead to a shot. this is indicative that he puts his teammates in good positions to score and that they’re good at finishing (duh. blake griffin.).

the next two best players in assist opportunities per game are john wall and lawson, whose teams both are pretty miserable. if lawson’s nuggets finished with the same efficiency that paul’s clippers did, he’d be averaging 11.5 assists per game. imagine what his player efficiency rating would be if his assists per game were that high…

combine all this with the fact that, in addition to creating the third most opportunities in the league for his teammates, he’s scoring more points per game than anyone else in the top 10 in assist opportunities per game, and you start to get a really good picture of how special lawson has been so far this season. in fact, i’d argue that, of the point guards not named chris paul, he’s been the best in the league this year.

again, it’s early in the year and it’s unclear whether lawson’s play is sustainable or not, but i think it’s starting to become clear that lawson is definitely a top-5 point guard. at least there’s one ray of hope for nuggets fans this season…